The Speakeasy, and KC in the 1920's

The 1920s. A roaring time for the alcohol industry, despite the fact the selling of liquor was banned nationwide. Speakeasies brought everyone together. Your race, gender, or wealth didn’t matter. It set everyone with a common goal: to find a good drink.

The 1920s was the time of Prohibition, where producing, transporting, selling, and consumption of alcohol was illegal, due to the 18th Amendment, but the government had a tough go enforcing it, thus leading to speakeasies.

Prior to the 20th Century, around the late 1880s, women made a push to ban saloons, because they saw not only drinking encouraged, but also gambling, prostitution, tobacco, and dancing; but after the saloon came their counterpart, the “speakeasy”. Now, most saloons had mainly men, young and old. But around the early 1900s, and with women being given the right to vote just one year before Prohibition,, they showed up more and more in speakeasies, sidling the corset, and created the “flapper” look. Made up of short skirts, short hair, bare arms and legs, and looser morals, at least for the time.

Kansas City was infamous for its speakeasies and corrupt politics during the early 1900s. When Kansas became a dry state in 1881, Kansas City, KS residents could just cross the border to Missouri and have a drink. 12th Street, in downtown KC, was widely known for its large variety of bars and taverns, and this wouldn’t change. Missourians, against the “Temperance Movement”, actually rejected statewide prohibition. Then in April 1901, Carrie Nation went to 12thSt and started smashing all the bars and saloons to pieces. She was arrested on April 15 and was fined $500($14,360 as of 2015) after 15 days of smashing bars.

When prohibition was finally enacted on to the state via the 18th Amendment, not much changed in KC, thanks Tom Pendergast and the Pendergast Machine. Pendergast was a political boss, ruling from a little 2-story yellow brick building next to a hotel. From here he bribed and fixed his way into basically ruling KC during his time. During the 20s, thanks to bribed cops, and a federal attorney on Pendergast’s payroll, Prohibition might as well have not existed in KC.

The 1920s. A roaring time for the alcohol industry, despite the fact the selling of liquor was banned nationwide. Pendergast ruled KC from a yellow brick building, and speakeasies brought everyone together. Your race, gender, or wealth didn’t matter. It and set them with a common goal: to find a good drink.